Project Gutenberg's The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories, by Owen Wister

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Jimmyjohn Boss and Other Stories

Author: Owen Wister

Posting Date: August 22, 2008 [EBook #1390]
Release Date: July, 1998

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JIMMYJOHN BOSS ***

Produced by Bill Brewer

THE JIMMYJOHN BOSS AND OTHER STORIES

By Owen Wister

To Messrs. Harper & Bothers and Henry Mills Alden whose friendliness and
fair dealing I am glad of this chance to record

Owen Wister

Preface

It's very plain that if a thing's the fashion--
Too much the fashion--if the people leap
To do it, or to be it, in a passion
Of haste and crowding, like a herd of sheep,

Why then that thing becomes through imitation
Vulgar, excessive, obvious, and cheap.

No gentleman desires to be pursuing

What every Tom and Dick and Harry's doing.

Stranger, do you write books? I ask the question,
Because I'm told that everybody writes
That what with scribbling, eating, and digestion,
And proper slumber, all our days and nights

Are wholly filled. It seems an odd suggestion--
But if you do write, stop it, leave the masses,
Read me, and join the small selected classes.

The Jimmyjohn Boss

I

One day at Nampa, which is in Idaho, a ruddy old massive jovial man
stood by the Silver City stage, patting his beard with his left hand,
and with his right the shoulder of a boy who stood beside him. He had
come with the boy on the branch train from Boise, because he was a
careful German and liked to say everything twice--twice at least when it
was a matter of business. This was a matter of very particular business,
and the German had repeated himself for nineteen miles. Presently the
east-bound on the main line would arrive from Portland; then the Silver
City stage would take the boy south on his new mission, and the man
would journey by the branch train back to Boise. From Boise no one could
say where he might not go, west or east. He was a great and pervasive
cattle man in Oregon, California, and other place